k, abbreviated vers:
hs music teacher once took us on a trip to see an Off Off Broadway play that had nothing to do with our class. Forgot the name, but it ripped off the title of a popular one back then and just left off the "!" at the end.
The cast was actually some kind of leftover Hippie Downtown commune, and the play was basically an editorial formatted as a play, a speech with the actors taking turns reading the lines passed off as a drama.
The subject was that the USSR's (this was back then) occupation of Eastern Europe and its massive defense program was merely a response to US/Western aggression, and they would have otherwise been peacefully farming their days away like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting if it weren't for us.
Hey, I grew up in a household that viewed all that big bad Ruskie stuff as propaganda, but even then I knew those who got to play Iron Curtain buffer zone might have a slightly different perspective on that take.
That being said, the need for a big bad enemy is central to any rise to and maintainance of power. That's what Trump did and what he subsequently served to become for his successor.
Cuba still has us quaking in our rubber booties, and the Iraq war wouldn't have happened if the majority of numbnuts here didn't think it was payback for taking them hostages in '79 because they can't tell a "q" from an "n." Sheesh, what's the percentage that can't find Canada on a map of North America here?
